Badenoch fails to land serious blows

The Commons got back to work after its four week “Conference Season” recess. This seems incomprehensible to most voters who think it would be much more productive if all the conferences were held (in different places) in the same week.

This (short) week’s conclusion from the Commons is that the new-ish PM is falling back on an almost Starmer-esque approach to block and deflect. Surprisingly effectively.

Wednesday 14^th October 2026 PMQs
After the Prime Minister was forced to make a brief excursion to Manchester City via the United Arab Emirates in response to Jerome Mayhew (Brookland & Fakenham, Conservative), the Leader of the Opposition kicked off on the Prime Minister’s apparent over-egging of the possible Russian interference in the Brexit referendum in his appearance in the liberal Dad “The Rest is Politics” podcast on Sunday.

It had become clear that the PM had been trying to resurrect the Brexit debate by suggesting that the result of the referendum had been materially affected by Russian interference to try to present the Conservative leader with a more pointed policy dichotomy in her attempts to refocus on the “Waitrose Woman” demographic as they have continuing pro-European inclinations. It is where one spends August for Heaven’s sake. At the Despatch Box, the Prime Minister continued to try to walk back his position on Russian interference after MI5’s current DG, Sir Ken McCallum (Becky Morton, BBC News, 13th October 2026 “MI5 chief warns against overstating Russian interference in Brexit vote.”) and MI6’s former “C”, Sir John Sawyers (BBCR4 Today, 14th October 2026 from 08:15:40), both suggested that it was not correct to characterise attempted Russian interference in the Brexit referendum as having had any material impact.

Although Badenoch’s points were made well, the PM blocked and deflected in almost Starmerian fashion and batted back a “have you even read the Russia interference report” quite effectively. The Leader of the Opposition moved on with little to show for the Russian escapade to the delayed Rosebank and Jackdaw decisions, but again the PM pushed this back, with barely restrained glee, to blaming the delay on previous Conservative errors in the semi-judicial approval process. From this, she moved on to the theme of Prime Ministerial delay and avoidance, but did not land any knock-out punches.

In contrast, the PM landed a reasonable blow against Conservative competence on the recent announcement of the truly absurd £10billion Cartlidge-inspired “Britannia Shield” plan and handed Badenoch back her accusation of avoidance by contrasting his decisions to end the pensions triple lock and developing closer ties with the European Union with Conservative procrastination.

This week’s PMQ duel felt like a points victory for Burnham, a victory sadly based on a “vibes” superiority. Badenoch’s questions were reasonable if predictable and were landed competently, but Burnham, not just for newness reasons, is absorbing the hits, handing back some crackers and almost as effectively avoiding answering questions as regularly as Sir Keir. Which is a criticism not a compliment.

Interestingly, Nigel Farage (Clacton, Reform UK), who was, unusually, called for an early question, did not push the Russian interference point, but after praising the Government (!) for proscribing the IRGC returned to Reform’s most significant theme, asking if the PM would accept that there was still a national emergency going on in the Channel with the daily arrival of single, young men. The PM made a surprisingly emollient response, sympathising with the personal security threats that Reform’s leader had been faced with, but only offering the “normal” response on the Small Boats that basically “things are getting better.” Not really an answer at all.

However, it had fallen to the currently unfashionable Sir Ed Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, LibDems) to push the PM towards Ukraine, whose President the Prime Minister was due to meet in Downing Street later on Wednesday afternoon. Sir Ed pointedly asked the PM to set out the Government’s view of Donald Trump’s deal with Vladimir Putin to buy Russian oil. The King of the North’s response was less than a resounding clarion call to oppose the American diesel betrayal, saying only that he would listen to President Zelensky carefully, that he had ensured that he would be able to give Ukraine news of further material support later in the day, but that he saw Britain’s main rôle as “bringing friends back together.” This is not terribly complicated code for “We’re not going to say anything to set The Donald off.”

Perhaps the most politically significant interchange actually came as a result of a question from Dame Harriet Baldwin (West Worcestershire, Conservative), sitting next to Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich & North Essex, Conservative) and resembling a resplendent fuschia in some respects, who asked:

“The Leader of the Opposition has made it crystal clear about doing deals with other parties. Will the Prime Minister make it equally clear, following the Green Party’s descent into the most abhorrent antisemitism, that he will rule out cooperating with them?”

Burnham responded:

“Can I condemn the motion that was passed unequivocally? It is wrong, it is antisemitic and this side of the House will have nothing to do with it. We will always take the right response when it comes to any partnerships with other parties. We cannot support a partnership with a party that holds a position that has recently been adopted.”

So at least that’s clear: the Green’s anti-Zionism resolution is considered by HMG to be anti-Semitic, which clears up an issue that TWOP thought was pretty obvious two weeks ago.

Tuesday 13^th October 2026
As 650 prisoners were being released from prison early on Tuesday Jake Richards (Rother Valley, Labour) Justice Minister appeared in the Commons to suggest that the early release scheme was the unavoidable result of a prison system that the Conservatives had handed over on the point of collapse. The Minister confirmed that the Government planned to build 14,000 new prison places by 2031.

The partial U-turn on Labour’s plan to curb the right to jury trial was also confirmed by Sara Sackman (Finchley & Golders Green, Labour) Justice Minister, although the revised arrangements received some limited support from former Attorney-General and House Baritone, Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge & Tavistock, Conservative).

Sir Geoffrey went on to oppose the significant even if amended changes to jury trials as: “it’s a bit like asking us to be grateful to the crocodile who leaves us our head after he has taken our legs” making a powerful plea to retain the right to elect for a jury trial at the Crown Court.

Monday 12^th October 2026
The PM returned to the Despatch Box to provide the House with an update on recent international developments. This turned out to be basically the less than astonishing attempts to develop a closer relationship with the EU that Burnham hopes to progress with a UK-EU summit to be held in Brussels on 20^th November.

That summit may or may not reach conclusions on the reduction of agri-food export bureaucracy, establishing closer relationships with EU agencies over immigration and border data sharing and the Erasmus+ youth mobility scheme. These are not new initiatives.

Burnham also confirmed that it was HMG’s view that the incident at RAF Fairford had “almost certainly” been directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Many MPs wanted to ask the Prime Minister about Donald Trump’s decision to make a deal with Vladimir Putin to buy Russian diesel in an attempt to reduce American pump prices. The King of the North welcomed the US President’s attempt to force an “Energy Ceasefire” but he refused to move any further down the path towards direct criticism of the American President or his diesel decision and characteristically defended his decision to call President Zelensky to offer help in the light of the American change of tack.

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Alex